New York’s mask mandate was overturned by a Long Island court on Monday night. Until the court agreed to a “stay” in the case at around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, confusion reigned in New York for schools, as well as for parents on both sides of the masking debate.

Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health Dr. Mary Bassett told Capital Tonight that she wants to let the legal process play out before looking into other options like legislative action.

“We will be filing papers on the 28th regarding our position on this matter,” Bassett said. “I have every confidence that we’ll prevail and that the importance of public health law that allows health departments to make determinations regarding protecting the public from communicable disease threats will be upheld.”

While Bassett’s confirmation was in mid-January, she has held the role in an acting capacity since December. Her confirmation vote was along party lines with Republicans voicing their disappointment in her statement that she would not look into her predecessor’s controversial decision to allow COVID-19-positive patients in hospitals to return to nursing homes.

Former state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker’s tenure was additionally tarnished by what some viewed as his office’s willingness to take orders from and be cowed by members of the Cuomo administration.

Regarding her decision not to investigate Zucker’s March 25th directive, Bassett seemed eager to set the record straight.

“I’m fully engaged with trying to protect nursing home residents at this time,” she said. “This pandemic has taken its highest toll among older individuals, people over the age of 65, so it’s very important that our nursing homes be safe.”

When asked what she would do if she was faced with the same set of circumstances that faced Zucker in March 2020, Bassett responded by pointing to the availability of rapid COVID tests.

“Nursing homes were peoples’ homes, so at issue is the question of whether or not people were contagious at the time they went home,” she said. “And I think we have a lot more tools at our disposal now to assess peoples’ risk.”

Bassett cites the delivery of rapid COVID tests to nursing homes across the state as one of those tools. Additionally, Bassett is optimistic about the future of one of the labs that was instrumental in developing COVID testing at the beginning of the pandemic.

“We have a wonderful resource in the NYS Health Department called the Wadsworth Lab,” she said.

Indeed, Gov. Hochul, as well as Gov. Cuomo before her, has touted plans to build a new facility for the lab. Bassett warns that any cuts to labs like Wadsworth are “extremely short-sighted,” however, Hochul’s budget proposal cuts Wadsworth’s budget by 22%.

According to the Empire Center for Public Policy, those cuts are part of a trend over the last decade, which has seen the lab’s funding and staff cut by two-thirds.

Finally, Bassett said that hope for the future shouldn’t go down the drain with wastewater testing emerging as an early warning system for the next pandemic.

“We are also doing very interesting things with wastewater surveillance, and that may be a way that we can keep an eye on pathogens as we go forward. We are implementing it now in several counties across the state, upstate, downstate, and the goal is to implement it statewide,” Bassett said. “That may be a way that we will have an early warning system.”